ChatBots
What is a Chatbot ?
Chat robot , a computer program that simulates human conversation, or chat, through artificial intelligence, Typically , Chatbot will communicate with a real person
“It’s (smart assistants) technology that’s inevitable,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
In layman terms, a chatbot can be defined as a computer software program which can converse with a human by both textual and auditory methods to assist him/her perform different tasks. Today these tasks can include activities such as searching for a product, weather reporting, customer care, etc.
Why Chatbot ?
- Bots are a lot easier to install than mobile apps
- Bots are easily distributed
- Quality mobile apps are expensive to built , maintain and deploy
- Moving complexity to the cloud reduces a user’s cognitive load
Chatbot - A big Opportunity
You are probably wondering “Why does anyone care about chatbots? They look like simple text based services… what’s the big deal?”
Great question. I’ll tell you why people care about chatbots.
It’s because for the first time ever people are using messenger apps more than they are using social networks.
“Messaging is where we spend a ton of our time and expect to communicate. It is ridiculous we still have to call most businesses.” — Josh Elman, Partner at Greylock
“People are now spending more time in messaging apps than in social media and that is a huge turning point. Messaging apps are the platforms of the future and bots will be how their users access all sorts of services.” — Peter Rojas, Entrepreneur in Residence at Betaworks
So, logically, if you want to build a business online, you want to build where the people are. That place is now inside messenger apps.
It’s potentially a huge business opportunity for anyone willing to jump headfirst and build something people want.
Examples of Chat Bots
- Weather bot - Get the weather whenever you ask. For eg. Telegram Weather bot
- Grocery bot- Help me pick out and order groceries for the week.
- Life advice bot -I’ll tell it my problems and it helps me think of solutions.
- Travel booking bot - It can book tickets of hotels and flights. For eg Tripoto
The chatbot can talk to you through different channels; such as
- Facebook Messenger
- Sir
- Telegram
- SMS
- Slack
- Skype and many others.
CHATBOTS AND THE FUTURE
Though we’ve come a long way from where we began in 1966, we have a long way to go. The future of a chatbot in the enterprise depends a lot on the advancements in AI. The only way chatbots can truly simulate a real human-like experience is through advanced natural learning processing and improved machine learning algorithms. To achieve this progress, the first step would be to accumulate an enormous amount of data, which can be altered constantly.
The biggest challenge for chatbots is mimicking real life conversations between humans in the most convincing way. By using accumulated data, chatbots can be made to replicate a human communication and embrace better personalisation. With most users hitting their saturation point after constantly using a lot of apps on a daily basis, we might see a better collaboration and co-existence of chatbots and apps in the future.
Chatbots definitely have made a special mark in the enterprise world, but did we truly tap their full potential? Only time will answer.
In the next blog i will discuss about how Chatbots really work and some technical stuff related to it .